AMHERST - Residents here who have maintained a relationship with the people of Kanegasaki Japan since the 1980s are expressing concern about the citizens of Amherst's sister city in the wake of the 8.9 magnitude quake that hit northeast Japan Friday.

The earthquake also triggered a tsunami that swept away everything in its path, including houses, cars, farm buildings on fire and boats, according to Reuters news service. Kanegasaki is located in the prefecture of Iwate, which was one of the hardest hit areas.

Senior Center director Nancy H. Pagano, one of many Amherst residents who have been to Kanegasaki, has been trying to get in touch with people there every since she heard about the earthquake.

“We’ve come to love these people. We’re scared to death," Pagano said Friday.

Amherst has had a formal sister-city relationship with the city of 16,000 since 1993, but an informal relationship began in the 1980s when a Mount Holyoke graduate who was teaching at a junior high school in Kanegasaki called a former professor at the South Hadley college looking for a school willing to welcome Japanese students.

Since then, more than 400 children, including the mayor’s children, have studied here or in Kanegasaki in a student exchange.

In the map above, the blue marker shows the location of Kanegasaki. The red marker shows the city of Sendai, the largest city near the earthquake's epicenter. View Kanegasaki, Japan in a larger map

Kanegasaki Mayor Yoshiichi Takahashi received a standing ovation when he addressed Amherst Town Meeting during a 2010 visit. The visiting delegation included the vice-chairman of the Kanegasaki Town Assembly, the chairwoman of the Kanegasaki Town Women’s Group Liaison Council and the principal of the Kanegasaki junior high school.

A group of 16 middle school students and four chaperones from Kanegasaki were scheduled to visit Amherst next week, Pagano said. Now she doesn’t know what might happen.

According to Reuters news service Tohoku Electric Power Co. cut power to all of its customers in three prefectures — Aomori, Iwate and Akita.

Select Board member Aaron A. Hayden, who visited Japan last year, said he someone from the group involved in bringing students here heard from someone in Kanegasaki.

"There's a lot of damage [...] (but) the people are basically OK," Hayden said, adding that the Japanese are “so incredibly well-prepared.”

Photo courtesy of Aaron HaydenThe view from the Town Hall tower in Kanegasaki, Japan, taken during a 2010 visit.

Pagano described the community of Kanegasaki as "beautiful," home to sprawling rice fields and mountains.

“They are so sweet and generous,” she said of the people there.

Members of the Kanegasaki Sister Committee are trying to get a message to them that the town will help in any way it can. A message sent to the mayor today bounced, Hayden said, but he is hoping that another message from the committee sent earlier this morning was received.

The University of Massachusetts, meanwhile, has 29 students studying in Japan but none of the schools they attend are near the earthquake's epicenter or in the path of the tsunami, said spokesman Daniel J. Fitzgibbons. He said the international program office has been contacted by some of the schools the students are attending and were awaiting word from four others.